A manger full of virtually wise man-free Christmas Eve links for those who survived the weekend

Since you’re reading this, we can assume you managed to survive, not only Friday’s Mayan apocalypse, but this past weekend’s last chance before Christmas full-contact shopping marathon.

And since I’m writing this, we can also assume I somehow managed to control my reaction to the jerk who honked and gestured angrily for my wife and I to get the hell out of his way as we walked through a Costco parking lot.

After all, had I followed the advice of the NRA’s leadership, I might have fired off 20 or 30 rounds from my fully automatic military-style assault rifle before realizing that I don’t in fact own one.

Or want to.

I have a hard enough time controlling the knee-jerk reaction of my middle finger when confronted by aggressive, hostile and/or threatening motorists. God forbid if the one next to it was attached to a trigger at the time.

But still.

It’s remarkable just how shallow the holiday spirit is revealed to be when confronted by the realities of a packed parking lot.

4 comments

re the cyclist who was passing backed-up cars and was left-crossed in the bike lane: I’m in this sort of situation a lot, both in the saddle and behind the wheel. It is very difficult for a driver to see an oncoming cyclist in this situation. As I see it, the only legal way for the driver to cross the intersection (assuming their view of the bike lane is blocked) is to enter the intersection, then wait for the light to turn red, then make their turn.

Drivers, understandably, don’t do this: they either don’t expect a bike to approach, or they weigh the small possibility of a collision vs. the certainty of massive delay and angry drivers behind them, and choose to take the risk. The careful ones make their turn VERY slowly, counting on any oncoming cyclist to see them and slow or stop, but even this is risky and illegal.

But I think it’s foolish for a cyclist to expect that sort of bike-aware behavior. I always slow when approaching an intersection in backed-up traffic if there’s a possibility of a left-cross.

Radical street redesign aside, I don’t think there’s a way for drivers to navigate this situation that’s both legal and practical.

I run into that situation nearly every day riding in the bike lane Ohio Ave in West L.A. The eastbound traffic backs up for blocks, while the bike lane is unimpeded, allowing me to ride past with ease. The problem comes from right turning cars that don’t check their mirrors, and left turning cars that don’t look for bikes.

As you point out, the only solution in both cases is to ride carefully and defensively, anticipating that someone could turn into your path. If you see a car that could turn into your path, slow or stop until you can catch the driver’s eye and know they’re going to wait for you.

That said, it should be the driver’s responsibility to see a cyclist and observe the right-of-way, rather than the cyclist’s obligation to be seen.

But I disagree that the problem comes from left-turning cars that _don’t_ look for bikes. The problem is that left-turning cars _can’t_ look for bikes, because there’s a line of stopped cars blocking their view. (Even if they go slow, their hood is still blocking the bike lane by the time the driver has a good view of the bike lane.)

Cyclists are very used to riding super-defensively so that we can avoid a crash even when a driver does something stupid. Pretty much every time a driver does something unsafe, they had a better, safer alternative that they chose not to take. But I don’t think that this is one of those situations, because in this situation, there is no good safe alternative that a driver can do.

So I don’t want to dismiss this problem as “yet another time that cyclists must compensate for unreasonable drivers”, and to lecture drivers about their responsibility to use their X-ray vision to see through a line of cars. I think that the problem here is a dangerous traffic situation, and it is totally possible for a driver who is educated, attentive, and careful to cause a collision anyways.

tl;dr If a driver in this situation slowly turns left in front of you while craning their head forward trying their best to see, don’t get mad at them, because for once it’s not their fault.